Bill Johnson - Seeing the Eyes of a Loving Father
Somehow, seeing the eyes of a loving father recalibrates every value in my soul. «If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face.» The face of God is what we are invited to pursue; think about that for a minute. The scripture gives that warning: anyone who sees his face dies. So it’s a great invitation: come and die. I tell you what, every time we come before the face of the Lord, something dies that shouldn’t have been alive. The Lord invites us into this ongoing interaction with the countenance of a perfect father.
So when he says, «Seek my face,» he’s not saying, «Seek my hand.» I have tried to make a strong point for the last probably 20 years that Jesus never scolded anyone for seeking his hand. Blind Bartimaeus wanted to see; Jesus didn’t say, «You’re supposed to seek to know me.» He gave him healing in his eyes. You know, the one with the dead relative, Jesus brought through his hands the power of God to establish the kingdom. He’s never scolded anyone for seeking his hand, his blessing. I think it’s a responsibility we have, but forgiveness doesn’t come from his hand; it comes from his face. It’s from the countenance; it’s the father who welcomes. That’s what’s needed right now — a group of people that get recalibrated to the face.
Somehow, seeing the eyes of a loving father recalibrates every value in my soul. Things that were important 10 minutes ago are no longer important. Things that plagued me or worried me or frustrated me suddenly don’t have the bite they once had. Why? Because there’s something about the countenance that just absorbs every offense or distraction that I carry in my heart. It just gets absorbed in this face of a loving father. He says, «If my people,» the ones I gave my name to, «if they would just humble themselves, seek my face, turn from their wicked ways.»
There is a picture given in the Old and New Testaments that seeking the face of God automatically implies turning from something. I must turn from the inferior to seek the face of God. You can’t drag both values into one act. He is the all-or-nothing God. He likes being first and king; that’s him. Everything is about putting him first. So here he says, «Seek my face, turn from your wicked ways.» In Hebrews 6, it says turning from dead works and faith towards God. It’s this turning from and unto. One of the things I’m so thankful for about the Lord is he welcomes us into his presence regardless of the condition of our heart. You can be bitter, you can be mad, you can be indifferent, you can be careless; it doesn’t matter where you’re at; he says, «Come!» But you can’t leave the same way you came. That’s the whole deal; you can’t expect, «I’m going to bring all this baggage and come in, and then I’m going to leave the same way.»
That’s not how it works. We come before him, and we just get refined in the journey. That’s part of the whole process: I come to seek his face, and things get recalibrated in this journey. It may be a five-minute journey; it may be an all-day-long journey. But it’s this journey where I engage once again with the face of God that reveals the heart of God and automatically engages me in my reason for being. He said, «If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek the countenance of this wonderful father.» I’ve been reading the last couple of days again Psalm 67, which is personally a favorite of mine. Verse one says, «Lord, bless me,» which I love that prayer; I’m into that kind of praying anytime: «Bless me and cause your countenance to shine upon me.»
Countenance is a word for favor; it’s the loving favor of a father. Brian and Jen just adopted another little boy, and we had him at our home again last night, and it’s just you don’t have— a parent will make faces to an infant that they would never even make in the mirror to themselves while they are alone. I mean, you say things, you make noises, you do all kinds of stuff to this little tiny infant that you don’t even know you’re doing; it just seems to come out of you. I’ve been told that children, actually infants, are trained in a lifestyle of joy through the countenance of their caregiver.
So it’s that face. Here we are; we seek the face of the Almighty God, this perfect father who welcomes us. We come with baggage; we leave clean and powerful. We come with issues; we leave confident he is settling the issues. He says, «You seek my face, you turn from your wicked ways; then I will hear.» That’s an amazing statement because the Bible tells us he doesn’t always hear. I don’t know if you know that or not, but scripture says, «If I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not hear me if I come conscious of sin and am unwilling to repent.» So here he welcomes us; he says, «Turn from your wicked ways; seek my face; then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin.» This is amazing to me: forgive their sin — personal blessing—and heal their land — corporate influence. The personal breakthrough becomes a transformational influence in the land.